


Projection

by burymeinziam



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, M/M, weird shit i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-29
Updated: 2014-11-29
Packaged: 2018-02-27 10:03:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2688722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burymeinziam/pseuds/burymeinziam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>have a thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Projection

He thinks Zayn can’t see him.

Every night he walks away, boots scraping against the stinking concrete covered with piss and cigarette butts, and Liam thinks Zayn can’t see him. His shoulders hunched like he feels smaller than he really is, like he’s such a tortured and frightened young man, whenever he walks away; looking as though he’s about to commit murder.

Liam’s guilt is as tangible as the cheap leather of his jacket and he thinks Zayn can’t see him.

Every night when Zayn falls asleep next to him, Liam stirs and his muscles move against Zayn’s body and he sees him, feels him, knows Liam better than anyone else. His guilt is liquid and rigid as his voice and he thinks Zayn doesn’t see it when he’s practically drowning in it. Its cold tentacles reach out and take hold, tight and suffocating, when they make love; when Zayn kisses him and strokes his hair while Liam sleeps. They grab Zayn by the neck, choking him, leaving dark blue-purple imprints on his throat.

Zayn wakes in a cold sweat, completely transfixed by the idea of Liam’s nightmares, his tremors caused by an immense guilt whose reason Zayn will probably never uncover. Liam’s breathing is hitched and ragged as it journeys up into Zayn’s ears in gasps and moans. Zayn’s eyes, bloodshot and tired from the strain of looking at such a pathetic display of a man, rest on Liam’s body crumpled up in the fetal position, teeth biting down on a pallid lower lip. Zayn remembers a time when Liam’s mouth left him transfixed, when all he wanted to do was kiss him until he forgot how to breathe. But now he looks at it, cracked and dry and ugly, and all Zayn can see is the lies it tells him. Zayn looks at Liam, Thick brown locks, drenched and matted, stuck to his skin with salty traces of sweat, white knuckles pulling tight at the sheets until Liam wakes up completely unaware of the torment he overslept and Zayn endured for him – the mere image of his body convulsing in pain seemed to hurt more than a thousand dirty, poison infested needles ever could.

Those words spewing from dry, cracked lips marred and peeling and caked with dried blood? Lies.

Liam’s words are fake.

He’s a fucking hypocrite.

He thinks Zayn can’t see him when the needle digs into his skin or when the gushing red of his blood dances and swirls with the acrid white on the flecked mirror when he’s sniffing all that cracked-porcelain.

So many empty promises ( _“I won’t do it again, I swear”_ ) and he thinks Zayn can’t see the through the glass stare poorly hidden behind dark sunglasses that always stained with dirty fingerprints.

Even now, as Liam walks up to him, slowly, timidly, like a child waiting to be scolded by his mother, he tugs at his sleeves, hiding the ugly needle marks where he’d pricked and probed at his already marred flesh to see how much he can handle before his body devours itself and turns itself inside out like a grotesque Halloween ornament. The black and blue and yellow and green bruises around his neck from his latest suicide attempt peer out from beneath the black turtleneck he never used to wear and Zayn clenches his fists to keep them from lashing out at this brain-dead skeleton.

Liam is a self-absorbed, self-destructive prick and he thinks Zayn can’t see him.

His parched lips part and utter Zayn’s name and he thinks Zayn can’t see the haze around him because he doesn’t slur when he’s high anymore.

Practice makes perfect, Liam thinks.

But Zayn can see him clear as day. Clear as his speech really isn’t.

It’s his usual fashion, Liam making them late again and Zayn doesn’t know why he hasn’t just moved out of their crappy apartment and bought himself a car. He knows for a fact that his parents would be thrilled to go as far as to buy one for him if it meant Zayn would get him away from the shitty, masochistic excuse of a boyfriend known as Liam Payne.

Zayn honestly doesn’t know why he doesn’t give up completely; let Liam slip and fall and not get back up again.

He isn’t even pretty anymore. As shallow as it sounds, Zayn initially fell for Liam’s looks. Only months after all of the mindless, bone-breaking sex did Zayn even consider the fact that he might actually love the guy. But Liam was perfect; hard lines and tanned skin and chocolate eyes and a boyish grin that warmed Zayn from the inside out. Liam was pretty with lips that left Zayn breathless and arms that seemed to keep Zayn anchored to the ground when he felt like he was seconds from floating away. Liam was loveable, and soothing with a tenderness that Zayn had never encountered before and probably won’t ever find again.

But Liam isn’t even pretty anymore. He’s hideous with red flecked skin and dull eyes and a mindfucked smile that makes Zayn’s blood run cold. He’s hideous with his nose constantly sprinkled white and forearms bruised from banging against the walls and his clothes stained and stinking of men Zayn doesn’t know and would never care to meet. Liam is detestable with his calloused touch and hoarse voice; with his violent implosions and perpetual wish for death.

Selfish asshole.

And he thinks Zayn can’t see him.

Every day, he’s haunted by them, Zayn thinks. Liam’s monsters dance like shadows cast against the crumbling walls of his consciousness. They reach out for him and distort Liam’s ruined face as though to frighten him. Something so innocent and pretty, so loveable and yet completely infested with something so ugly and cursed.

But then there are those times when Liam leans in to kiss him, lips pulled down at the corners, bone white fingers touching the exposed skin of Zayn’s neck. And Zayn suppresses the shiver that runs down his spine as Liam’s fingers close over him tenderly as they always do and the darkness is already creeping up from the corners of his eyes to envelope and swallow Zayn whole, leaving him for dead as it always does.

The cold of Liam’s body infects Zayn’s and the remaining embers of his rage hiss and die, rendering him helpless.

It makes Zayn want to pull out his fingernails, one by one. He feels Liam’s jittery hands on him, the monsters seeping out from underneath cold, clammy skin as they claw their way into Zayn’s chest where they give birth to erratic, skipping heartbeats. And Zayn feels wrath, not anger, deep in his veins in his futile attempts to fend off his inevitable suffocation.

Liam sits in the armchair across from him and stares out the window with empty eyes. His hair, wet from the shower, sticks to his forehead and Liam really just looks like a stranger. When Liam’s eyes finally move to focus on Zayn, Zayn can’t help but to shift his gaze toward the book resting in his lap.

The letters rise from the worn pages of Zayn’s book, twisting and turning in front of his eyes, burning at his retinas.

“ _You’re the monster,_ ” they say and Zayn thinks he could scream.

Once the book falls from his lap, Zayn doesn’t even attempt to make the effort to pick it up again. It’s hard cover shrieks under the sole of his shoe when he gets up, making his way toward the small kitchen where Liam’s soiled clothes lay crumpled on the hard tiled floor. Zayn picks them up, heart skipping a beat when the stale scent of smoke and booze coats the insides of Zayn’s nostrils. For a split second time stills and all Zayn can hear is the harsh sound of his own heartbeat.

He buries his face in Liam’s coat and inhales a scent of comfort and familiarity, submerges himself into the faraway memories that had long since been beaten down and dismembered by insomnia and trauma. Zayn tries to smile, but his face hurts. His lips are frozen in a permanent scowl that never seems to leave his face. It’s almost as though he’s forgotten what it means to be happy.

\---

Zayn finds himself standing in the middle of their bedroom covered in impenetrable night and shrouded in chills. Darkness drops from the walls in fat droplets of navy blues and blacks. His shadow, cast against the opposite wall, never moves with him instead choosing to stand still, twisting and turning with the passing headlights that flash in through the open windows.

The wind chime in front of the window tingles with slivers of some unknown melody. It taunts Zayn, prompting him to think back on the time he’s lost, but nothing comes to him but the sensation of blood crusting the surface of his palms, his face, his lips.

Numb, Zayn moves through the dark house, floating over hardwood floors with cold, unmoving feet. His hands stretch out in front of him while his body moves, room by room, like some somnambulistic zombie crashing against counters and doorways…

A gurgling

A guttural scream

They make this dead body of his – this body that really isn’t even in Zayn’s possession anymore – turn around and stare at its source with dumb, empty eyes.

“ _Monster! You’re a monster! Goddamn you, you fucking monster!_ ”

Blood gushes from the severed artery in Liam’s neck with every gasping, gurgling breath, every shriek of the same word ( _“Monster, Monster!”_ ). This terrifying, disgusting mass of torn flesh and loose tendons points up at Zayn with shaking hands and bulging eyes, wheezing lungs pushing words from his mouth as he cries out in helpless anger asking

“ _Why, why, why?_ ”

His massacred lover, cut up with his hate. Zayn’s monster, his demon in his precious coat with their happily ever after seeping through its hollow pockets.

“ _I love you, you monster_.”

And Zayn’s life caves in, the hard tiles beneath his feet stained with coagulating reds and browns.

\---

“Zayn!”

The coat drops from Zayn’s shaking hands onto the floor. Liam’s face dives out from the gloom, much too close and not close enough as their noses brush. Zayn touches his throat, his lips, fingers traveling across Liam’s eyes as his nails scratch down his jaw, his neck and his collarbone. Zayn’s hand closes over Liam’s strong, beating heart and he leans his head against his chest to savor the sound.

It’s like “I love you” sent over and over through Morse code.

Liam is so pretty, Zayn thinks, with his dark brown hair and big doe eyes, the left one carrying a small red mark right beneath it from that time when Zayn had marred Liam’s skin with cigarette ash and they’d met for the first time.

A slight brush penetrates the pallor of Liam’s cheeks as he holds Zayn close, asks “Why are you looking at me like that?”

Zayn is seeing him for the first time, seeing himself reflected back in Liam’s eyes and there, with sunken cheeks and wet hair hanging limp over his empty eyes, thin, quivering lips caught up in liquid amber is the sad ruin of a man.

There stands the monster.

His name is Zayn Malik and he’s filled with a combination of rage and love for the only glimmer of light in his shipwrecked life.

“Liam,” he says, his voice hoarse. “I love you so much that I despise you.”

Liam doesn’t say anything in return, just lets his knuckles turn white from holding onto Zayn’s shoulders so firmly.

He’ll never let go.


End file.
